by Rebecca Mikulin

Created on: April 03, 2009

I think in one corner of our minds any of us that have never been in such a situation would wonder how we would react if we caught our significant other cheating. Perhaps we wonder what would make them do it, or what made them do it if they already have...my guess, however, is that no one has planned to haul that significant other into a plague area where s/he will "pay" for those sins.

Kitty (Naomi Watts) had all sorts of fanciful ideas about love and marriage...eventually...until her parents inform her that they didn't want to have her leeching off of them anymore and expect her to marry the first eligible bachelor to come along. That man came in the form of the reserved but distinguished doctor Walter Fane (Edward Norton) and Kitty quickly marries him.

There's a funny thing about marriages that are based on what other people think...they don't tend to be very happy, and often exceedingly lonely. When Walter catches Kitty in the middle of an affair with a charming - and married - politician (Liev Schreiber) he responds with the utmost calm...and whisks Kitty away to China, into the epicenter of a cholera epidemic that's killing people by the hundreds, without inoculating either one of them.

What follows is a painful story of discovery in which both sides must strive for understanding, and Kitty finally begins to get to know the man she calls husband. She begins to find her own place in plague-ridden China amidst hostile locals who have good reason to shun the British, who have encroached on their town and taken away their local water supply.

I almost passed this movie up since it sounded completely different from the kind of films I generally enjoy, but decided to give it a try because of its semi-historical setting and because I felt like it was a good time to try something different - like a depressing romance instead of my normal fare of psychological thrillers and morbid comedies. While it was a little more sentimental than I'm used to, it was still definitely a worthwhile watch.

I've never been a huge fan of Naomi Watts, but as a young, naive wife I think she did an excellent job...though Edward Norton certainly showed himself to be the true star of the film with a wonderful multi-faceted performance, with a character that you'll love and hate by turns throughout the film up until its perfectly fitting end. Toby Jones played a smaller part as the couple's guide in China, but it was nothing spectacular (unlike his part as Truman Capote in Infamous and Schreiber has definitely done better.

The plot does run a little slow in this movie, but then again that could be my own perception as someone who doesn't generally watch this type of film. One thing that really impressed me was the overall atmosphere of the film that really conveyed the foreign atmosphere (at least, foreign to me) of a small century-ago Chinese village.

Overall this movie is not for everyone because it is depressing and maddeningly sentimental at times with a plot that drags a bit, but if you can look past those to the acting of the main characters and an amazing story filled with all the elements that make a wonderful tragic romance that even appealed to my almost exclusively non-romantic character.

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